Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz

Samantha Goldstein

Elena Hubbell
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram

Jeremy Kaplan

Sarah Khan

Lucas Maiman

Magdalena Mihaylova

Ellery Rosenzweig

Jason Rowland

Anu Roy-Chaudhury

Alex Satola
Ali Safawi

 Ashley Zhang
Sam Weinberger

Erin White

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MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA 

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Meanwhile, 
the 

humanitarian 
crisis 
in 

Venezuela continues. Citizens 
still face food shortages and 
power 
outages. 
This 
has 

drawn the attention of the 
international 
community, 

with aid from across the 
world flowing to the borders. 
The U.S., along with the a 
large part of the international 
community, 
backs 
Guaidó 

as the current Venezuelan 
president, which has added 
another political dimension 
to the crisis. This tension 
has also been exacerbated 
by the long and turbulent 
past between the U.S. and 
Venezuela, with Maduro even 
refusing to accept U.S. aid as 
a result. Ultimately, however, 
the most pressing aspect of 
the crisis is the miserable 
shortage of basic goods and 
freedoms 
the 
Venezuelan 

people have endured. At this 
point, inaction is tantamount 
to complicity; the U.S. has a 
responsibility to address the 
crisis. By collaborating with 
regional 
and 
international 

actors, 
the 
U.S. 
can 
help 

establish a truly free and fair 
presidential 
re-election 
as 

soon as possible and thereby 
minimize the possibility of 
further Venezuelan suffering.

The most important and 

pressing fact is that the people 
of Venezuela are currently 
fighting for survival. Citizens 
lack basic access to food and 
medical services and are facing 
a national blackout. The U.S. 
ought to continue to do what 
it can as an economic and 
political power to provide aid 
to the Venezuelans. We at The 
Daily feel it is important that 
this aid be distributed for the 
sole purpose of humanitarian 
assistance and not as a tool 
in 
disrupting 
Maduro 
or 

furthering domestic political 
agendas. 
Recently, 
Trump 

has erroneously blamed the 
current dismal conditions of 
Venezuela on socialism, rather 
than resource dependency and 
economic 
mismanagement. 

This 
only 
worsens 
the 

politicization of the problem. 
Furthermore, 
Venezuelans 

are being denied aid due their 
country’s turbulent political 
history with the U.S., so any 
sense that American aid is 
simply 
cover 
for 
political 

interference 
could 
lead 
to 

continued denial of aid for 
Venezuelans. Approaching the 
immediate problem at hand 
will take cooperation on both 
sides to ensure the quickest 
and most efficient resolution 
possible.

This 
also 
means 
that 

Maduro will need to step up 
and put his own politics aside 
in order to help the people 
of his country. Maduro often 
invokes the idea of “patria,” 
or fatherland, to justify his 
rule. If this is truly the case, he 
ought to do whatever it takes 
to provide Venezuela’s citizens 
with the most basic needs of 
food, medicine and basic living 
standards. As we have stressed 
with 
regard 
to 
the 
U.S. 

government, the Venezuelan 
government — including both 
Maduro and the opposition 
— should put aside political 
agendas in order to ensure the 
livelihoods of its citizens.

Beyond 
the 
immediate 

humanitarian issue, however, 
it 
is 
increasingly 
evident 

that the root of Venezuela’s 
problems is intertwined with 
a 
violent 
political 
history. 

The international community 
must tread carefully in the 
fashion by which it provides 
aid 
and/or 
intervenes 
in 

Venezuela. We encourage the 
United States to reflect on 
its complicated relationship 
and past involvement in Latin 
America, and caution against 
military 
or 
imperialistic 

intervention. To go in and 
determine the presidency by 
force would be an excessive 
overreach of the United States’ 
position, and would likely fuel 
Maduro and his supporters’ 
view of the U.S. as a nefarious 
agent bent on political control. 
Instead, we suggest further 
collaboration 
between 
the 

U.S. 
and 
the 
international 

community, specifically with 
Latin 
American 
coalitions 

that have a larger stake in 
finding a resolution, so that 
free democracy and peace can 
eventually be reached through 
fair and uninhibited elections.

The future in Venezuela is 

undoubtedly ambiguous, and 
we cannot predict the fates of 
Maduro or his opposition. What 
is absolutely clear, however, 
is the immediate suffering of 
everyday Venezuelans who lack 
basic resources and necessities; 
they have weathered enough 
human 
rights 
abuses 
to 

justify 
reasonably-restrained 

involvement and aid in their 
country. To the extent that 
their suffering has been cruelly 
exacerbated by political unrest, 
it can also be remedied by 
political solutions. We hope that 
the U.S. can take a benevolent 
role in this project and help 
establish true democracy in 
Venezuela that caters to the 
needs of Venezuelans first.

T

he 
elaborate, 
“Gossip 

Girl”-worthy college scam 
recently revealed by the 

FBI has incensed people across the 
United States, with college students 
and their parents in particular 
expressing the most outrage. The 
scam was possible because of 
William “Rick” Singer, who helped 
parents fake their children’s test 
scores, 
recruitment 
in 
college 

athletic teams, and even their races 
and ethnicities to be accepted into 
prestigious universities such as the 
University of Southern California 
and various Ivy League schools. He 
collected over $25 million for his 
efforts, and his clientele included 
notable celebrities Felicity Huffman 
and Lori Loughlin.

Loughlin’s 
daughter 
Olivia 

Giannulli, better known as Olivia 
Jade, was accepted to USC after 
her parents paid $500,000 for 
their two daughters to be admitted 
as crew recruits, complete with 
staged photos of the girls on 
rowing machines. As a social 
media influencer with 1.9 million 
subscribers on YouTube, 1.4 million 
followers on Instagram and various 
partnerships with brands such as 
TRESemmé and Sephora — which 
have since ended — Giannulli has 
received perhaps the most backlash 
on social media. Her entire brand 
was built around an “I’m rich but 
still down to earth” image, which 
was completely shattered by her 
involvement in the scam. Giannulli 
has also said in a video that was 
uploaded before she began her 
freshman year, “I don’t really care 
about school.” She later apologized 
for her statements in a follow-up 
video. Her words have been the 
subject of many news reports in the 
wake of the admissions controversy, 
and many people are angered that 
someone who apparently does not 
even care about her education was 
able to use her privilege to attend a 
school over rejected students who 
work hard and do care about their 
education.

Many students who grew up 

watching “Full House” bemoan 
Loughlin’s 
involvement 
in 
the 

scheme (“I’m so sad, I love ‘Aunt 
Becky,’” my friend told me when 
she heard the news), and Giannulli’s 
subscribers openly mocked the star 
through comments on her social 
media before she disabled them. 
Since the scandal first came to 
light, TMZ reported that Giannulli 
and her sister have dropped out of 

college because “the family feels 
certain, if the girls went back to USC, 
they would be ‘viciously bullied.’”

As a college student, it of course 

upsets me that students such as 
Giannulli bought their way into 
prestigious schools when there are 
so many students who apply to these 
schools with true credentials and 
get rejected, or receive admission 
but cannot attend due to expensive 
tuition. Yet, I am almost more 
irritated that Giannulli and her 
sister gave up their spots at USC so 
easily due to a fear of being “viciously 
bullied,” if TMZ’s source is correct. 
Their ability to drop out of college 
so easily showcases their privilege 
more than their ability to scam 
their way into it in the first place. 
It has never been a secret that rich 
white folks use their money to earn 
their children places at top colleges, 
whether it be by making donations 
to the school or leveraging personal 
and business connections. Singer’s 
clients have simply been performing 
the same tradition, just in a much 
more illegal way. While this doesn’t 
excuse their actions by any means, it 
makes them less shocking.

So many students, particularly 

students of color, face both outright 
and covert bullying in schools that 
invalidate their right to be there even 
when they do not scam their way 
in. Such bullying dates back to the 
landmark Supreme Court decision 
Brown v. Board of Education, in 
which 
school 
segregation 
was 

outlawed. The Little Rock Nine, a 
group of nine Black students who 
enrolled at a previously all-white 
school in Arkansas to test the court 
decision, had to be escorted in by 
federal troops. Even today, many 
people attribute the admission 
of students of color in colleges to 
affirmative action rather than their 
academic achievements. We have 
all heard the argument that the only 
reason students got into a university 
is because they are Black or another 
underrepresented 
race. 
These 

students who have their intelligence 
constantly undermined are exactly 
the kinds of students defended by 
critics of parents involved in the 
scam: Students who work honestly 
and tirelessly for the chance to earn 
admission to a school, knowing that 
if they don’t get accepted, there’s 
nothing they can do, and that if they 
do get accepted, they need to work 
even harder than they did before.

These students don’t have the 

luxury of quitting school because 

of a fear of bullying that they will 
almost inevitably face as people 
of color at an institution of higher 
education. Students whose parents 
can afford to pay bribes to send 
them to college don’t have to worry 
about earning enough money post-
graduation to make a living. Perhaps 
these students don’t necessarily 
receive the kind of blatant backlash 
that 
Giannulli 
has 
received. 

However, these students have the 
burden of knowing that they can’t 
make mistakes, because any that 
they do make will perpetuate racial 
stereotypes that already undermine 
their presence at their school. They 
do not have the privilege of buying 
their way into school, and they do 
not have the privilege of making 
mistakes. They do not have the 
privilege of dropping out after 
funneling so much of their hard-
earned resources into obtaining an 
education.

I do believe that the Giannullis 

made the right choice in dropping 
out. Yet, I wish that the reason 
they did it was because they felt 
remorse about the situation, rather 
than because they were afraid 
of being bullied. From the harsh 
backlash they have received, it’s 
understandable 
that 
they 
feel 

scared and mortified. But their 
willingness to give up their spots 
at USC without even fighting for 
them, despite their willingness to 
be a part of an incredibly illegal 
scheme to be admitted in the first 
place, further undermines the 
efforts of students who endure 
hardships for the chance to receive 
an education.

To all parents out there: If your 

children don’t get admitted to the 
college of their dreams, enroll 
them in another school where they 
earned admission, and encourage 
them 
to 
submit 
a 
transfer 

application for the following year or 
semester. If you have enough money 
to bribe college admissions to admit 
your child, instead use that money 
to hire tutors for your children so 
that they can maintain a high GPA 
so as not to risk commemorating 
their college years with a criminal 
record. Bribery may seem like 
a perfectly acceptable course of 
action in “Gossip Girl.” In this case, 
however, do not let life imitate art.

Krystal Hur can be reached at 

kryshur@umich.edu.

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When dropping out is a privilege

KRYSTAL HUR | COLUMN

I 

love ghosts. I love ghost tours, 
paranormal 
investigation 

shows, rumors and stories of 

hauntings, attributing something 
falling off my shelf to a ghostly 
presence; I love it all. To be 
perfectly clear, I’m not talking 
about horror. I have enormous 
respect for the horror genre and 
its cultural significance, but I 
do not derive the same thrill 
and enjoyment from consuming 
horror media that die-hard fans 
do.

But ghosts? I absolutely adore 

ghosts. I’m endlessly fascinated 
by them, and it seems I’m not the 
only one: 45 percent of Americans 
believe in ghosts, and 18 percent 
of Americans say they’ve seen a 
ghost.

What I think draws me to 

ghost stories so much is the 
storytelling aspect of it all. 
The occult combines with the 
historical combines with gossip 
and rumors to create a lore — 
a 
hyper-specific 
geographic 

mythology in which the dead 
still walk with us. For relatively 
young country, the United States 
is positively littered with ghosts.

In nearly every city and town 

across America, you can hear 
stories about local hauntings 
and lore, from Puritans hung for 
witchcraft in New England to 
aspiring starlets found chopped 
into 
pieces 
in 
Los 
Angeles. 

Specters seem to linger in both 
the grandeur of old mansions 
and in the dust and destitution of 
abandoned mines; in the echoing 
halls of plantation houses and in 
the fields. Whether you believe 
in ghosts or not, we can piece 
together a history from ghost 
stories alone, a history that reveals 
both what we love and fear the 
most.

There is, perhaps, no time 

in American history more filled 
with phantoms than the years 
immediately following the Civil 
War. The death toll was massive, 
with Union and Confederate 
forces 
suffering 
somewhere 

between 650,000 to 850,000 
deaths combined. That’s about 2 
to 2.7 percent of the population, 
more deaths of U.S. soldiers than 
any in other conflict and nearly 
half of the total number of U.S. 
soldiers lost in all wars combined. 
How does a nation grieve this 
massive loss? How do the millions 
of loved ones left behind reconcile 
the deaths of parents, spouses and 
children?

Whether the ghosts were 

the product of an overactive 
imagination, intense grief and 
a desire to communicate with a 
loved one just one more time, or the 
actual spirits of the dead roaming 
the Earth, it seemed that no one 
could escape ghosts in America 
in the 20 or so years following 
the Civil War. Ghosts supposedly 
even followed Sarah Winchester 
all the way to San Jose, where 
she built her large and bizarre 
estate. Her husband, William, 
was the owner of the Winchester 
Repeating Arms Company, the 
manufacturer of the gun rumored 
to have claimed the most lives 
over the course of the war. When 
he died of tuberculosis and their 
infant child passed too, Sarah took 
her inheritance and moved west, 
where she began construction of 
her massive, labyrinthine home.

The story goes that Sarah had 

consulted a psychic, who told her 
that death was following her as a 
result of all the lives her husband’s 
guns had taken. Once she started 
building her home, she could not 
stop. She had to keep building — even 
adding partial floors and hallways 
that didn’t go anywhere — in order to 
appease the spirits that haunted her.

Sarah is just one story, but it 

seems that many postbellum ghost 
stories involve women. Countless 
sisters, daughters and widows of 
the hundreds of thousands dead 
during the war seem to have stories 
of their loved ones reaching out 
to them from beyond the grave. 
Sometimes, however, these women 
were desperate enough to reach out 
to the dead themselves.

Originating in 1848, but rapidly 

gaining popularity through the ante 
and postbellum eras, the Spiritualist 
movement in America signaled to 
a new form of spirituality. It was a 
movement that rejected the mores 
of organized Christianity and the 
idea of a go-between God, instead 
claiming that its followers could 
communicate directly with the 
dead. In Spiritualism, there was no 
heaven and hell and no God — just 
a judgement-free afterlife that all 
could access.

Spiritualists held seances and 

ceremonies in which they reached 
out to the dead, who responded 
with knocks and walls and tables 
and levitating objects, along with 
other 
seemingly 
unexplainable 

phenomena. 
One 
prominent 

Spiritualist and self-styled “spirit 
photographer,” William Mumler, 
even claimed that he could capture 
the spirit of a deceased loved one 
on photograph. His clientele was 
diverse, 
including 
Mary 
Todd 

Lincoln among others.

Many prominent Spiritualists, 

however, were women. The original 
practitioners from upstate New 
York were the Fox sisters: 15-year-
old Margaret and 12-year-old Kate. 
Spiritualism differed from other 
organized religions in that, well, it 
wasn’t really very organized. Were 
there a clergy, however, the majority 
of its ordained members would be 
women. These women were also 
involved with other causes, such 
as abolition in the antebellum, civil 
rights in the postbellum and the 
movement for women’s suffrage, 
among other things. As time passed 
and these movements, already 
controversial, 
fell 
further 
into 

disfavor, more and more Spiritualists 
were brought on trial for fraud. 
Strides were made in the field of 
parapsychology, and by 1920, the 
movement all but ceased to exist.

CAROLINE LLANES | COLUMN

Caroline Llanes can be reached at 

cmllanes@umich.edu.

The most important 

and pressing fact 
is that the people 
of Venezuela are 

currently fighting for 

survival

American ghost stories

FROM THE DAILY

Venezuela deserves democracy
O

n Feb. 18, President Donald Trump issued a statement to Venezuela’s 
military: abandon its support for current Venezuelan President 
Nicolás Maduro — or else. The president warned at a speech at 

Florida International University that if the military continues to support 
Maduro, they will “lose everything.” While this ultimatum is vague by 
nature, it brings up concerns about how far the U.S. is willing to go to in 
order to oust Maduro as president and let Juan Guaidó, Maduro’s U.S.-
backed challenger, assume power until a new election can be held. Guaidó 
claims the recent election that re-elected Maduro was fraudulent, and has 
since proclaimed himself the interim president until fair elections can be 
held — a point the legislature supports and Maduro dismisses.

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